Lost it All
by Sebe
Summary: Stiles was taken away from them. They got him back, or they thought they did. But they might have been too late already. Three snapshots as The Pack reacts to a different Stiles after he's tortured. Jackson grasps for a reaction through violence, Allison is overwhelmed by her own perceived helplessness, and Derek, Derek is just desperate and stumbling.


Author's Notes: A few different perspectives on the pack reacting after Stiles has been hurt badly. It's purposely vague what exactly happened to him. It's always seemed more horrific to me to imagine what could have happened than to be told.

Summary: Stiles was taken away from them. They got him back, or they thought they did. But they might have been too late already.

Three snapshots as The Pack reacts to a different Stiles after he's tortured. Jackson grasps for a reaction through violence, Allison is overwhelmed by her own perceived helplessness, and Derek, Derek is just desperate and stumbling.

**Lost it All**

**(Anger)**

"Jackson!" He's stalking away, but he stops because it's her and he could never walk away from her, never again. Even if her voice was sharp and cutting, reprimanding and angry. He spins on her.

"I didn't-" he yells, cuts off. He doesn't know why he started that sentence. He hadn't meant to, but it was true. Lydia's watching him with a tight expression, saying nothing, just waiting in that perfect pissed off way of hers. He heaves out a frustrated breath and pulls a rough hand through his hair, pacing.

He's not good with this, doesn't know what to do with it. But all he can see is himself, claws out in an empty threat with desperation clawing through his chest, almost frantic for a reaction as he stared into cold, unmoved eyes. Not unafraid because he was playing the brave little human, but because he didn't care. Jackson could have torn his throat out and he genuinely didn't care.

What Jackson refuses to think is that that was what Stiles had been waiting for and wouldn't have minded, might have even been grateful.

He feels sick.

He turns his back on Lydia, clenching his eyes closed tight to try and dispel the flat indifference in Stiles'.

"I didn't mean to…" Jackson could have been completely serious about hurting Stiles and the other teen think he would have let him. He doesn't know what to _do_ with that.

Arms wind around his waist and he breathes. Strawberry hair against his back has always calmed him, but she's shaking too. She's scared too.

"I know." She tells him, absolving and confessing something that she rarely ever does; she doesn't know what to do either and she's afraid. There's a problem she can't solve, a person she can't reason her way through and fix and she's absolutely terrified.

He wraps his arms over hers and they stand there for a long time.

**(Helpless)**

Allison had bandaged him up when it was the worst, the first time. After Derek had set him down so reluctantly in the back with her and Scott so he could drive because someone had to. Derek had been covered in Stiles' blood the entire night, wide-eyed and unnoticing.

It had taken long moments before Scott had uncurled enough from around his friend, stopped growling lowly and let her near. He'd held him so gently, as carefully as he'd ever held her.

She'd pressed on the bleeding, wincing when he didn't. She wrapped what she could get to with what she could find; torn strips of blankets around his arms, an old sweater against the mess of his back, pressed to Scott's chest, her scarf, held down with her shaking hands, over his abdomen.

Scott said she talked to him the whole time, mumbled every word of comfort she'd ever heard. She didn't cry, not when Scott already was.

She'd tried her best to piece him together, hold him there and _keep_ him, make him stay. Now she couldn't even do that. There was no more bleeding to slow, no more shallow breaths or unsteady heartbeats to count. Nothing and everything to fix.

Something had splintered, died inside of Stiles. She knew that. She just wasn't sure if it was something _They_ had done, or if Stiles had done it to himself. The will to survive was a strong instinct, after all.

Stiles was walking and talking and smiling and dying in front of them every day and she couldn't do anything. All his wounds had healed over into scars, most easily hidden by clothes. He looked almost the same physically. But she was sure that there were injuries she had missed that first night. They were still bleeding and too deep for butterfly bandages.

Allison might have a bow and some useful knowledge and leverage with other hunters, but she still often felt her own inadequacy compared to the rest of the pack. She couldn't do much when it came down to it, but, she had decided, she could take care of them when they couldn't take care of themselves. She could be there, waiting to comfort them and give them something steady and dependable to fall back on in a crisis (not a safe place to go because they already had someone for that).

But she'd failed.

Later That Night, the pack gathered, huddled, in a small impersonal room, saying nothing. Her father was there, leaning against the wall, troubled expression flickering between her and down the long hallway.

When the silence was too much, she stood and quietly, stiffly excused herself. Scott didn't reach for her, too focused on faint signs of life. She wandered, feeling disconnected, down to an empty supply closet and closed the door. Later, when Scott's tears had finally stopped and a blank expression had settled in it's place, when she didn't have to be strong anymore, she cried and keened and sunk to the floor.

She stayed there a long time.

**(Grief)**

Derek's angry. Growling at Stiles, scarred back pressed against the wall, pinned.

"Try again."

Derek stutters at the voice, tone strange, strained and far away. He sees red marks on Stiles' neck from where he has his hand, claws having extended without permission. He jerks away in horror, like he's been burned. Before he can either stutter an apology or drop to his knees and beg forgiveness, Stiles leans slightly away from the wall, toward him. Not curled in or with arms up defensively, but instead with his head held back, throat exposed.

"Try again." He's so calm, almost pleading, begging for claws around his neck, for blood running down his chest and Derek's _destroyed_ by it.

This is his mess, his fault all over again. He kept dragging the teen into this world. Derek's the one that broke him, he knows that. Even if he was miles away, tearing the town apart with the rest of the pack, searching and latching onto every lead, even if he wasn't one of the faces Stiles saw in his nightmares, Derek knows it was still him.

"Try again, try again," Stiles is chanting, tears in his eyes and smiling madly. This time, Derek does sink to his knees, grabbing Stiles wrist, clutching him, dragging him down with him.

Wrapped up tight, Derek doesn't know if he's anchoring Stiles down to the world or holding him under.


End file.
